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It makes sense. The only 'even playing field' in education is the one that can be created within the school environs. Once the children leave the school they go into highly differentiated homelives. The more of their formal education that takes place outside of the school itself, the more their experience of education diverges along socio-economic lines.
In Britain, we often find that the period directly following a long holiday, like the Christmas break or even more the summer holiday, children from homes where learning is likely to be supported and enabled haven't fallen back in their understanding, whereas children from more challenging backgrounds have. So a youngster who lives in a house with several siblings, a parent at work and another in poor health, who shares a bedroom and has no private space, is likely to have to spend the first week or two of a new term playing catchup.
By the time they get to secondary school (junior high I think) the gap has usually widened enough to become measurable.
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